Dropping a demure curtsy, Tiffany raised her eyes to his face, favouring him with a wide, innocent gaze. She had previously only seen him from a distance, and she now perceived that he was very good-looking, and even more elegant than she had supposed. But instead of showing admiration he was looking rather amused, and that displeased her very much. She smiled at Lord Lindeth, and said: “I’ll take you to my aunt, shall I? Then perhaps she won’t scold after all!”

Mrs Underhill showed no disposition to scold, though she was quite shocked to think that two such distinguished guests should have entered her drawing-room unannounced. When, much later, she learned from her offended butler that Miss Tiffany had waved him aside, like a straw, she was aghast, and exclaimed: “Whatever must they have thought?”

Totton shuddered; but Tiffany, reproached for her social lapse, only laughed, and declared, on the authority of one who had lived for three months on the fringe of the ton, that a want of ceremony was just what such persons as Lord Lindeth and the Nonesuch preferred.

Lord Lindeth, too much dazzled to question the propriety of Tiffany’s conduct in impulsively seizing his hand, and leading him up to his hostess, would have endorsed this pronouncement; Sir Waldo, following in their wake, reflected that he would have thought Tiffany’s artlessness amusing, if only some other young man than Julian had been enthralled by it He was in no way responsible for Julian; but he was fond of the boy, and he knew very well that his aunt Lindeth implicitly trusted him to keep her darling out of mischief. This duty had not, so far, imposed any great tax on his ingenuity: Tiffany would have been flattered to know that one glance at her had been enough to convince Sir Waldo that she represented the first real danger Julian had encountered.

A swift look round the room informed Sir Waldo that the company consisted of the same persons whom he had met at the Squire’s dinner-party, and he resigned himself to an evening’s boredom, exactly as his hostess had foretold. “Because you can’t conjure up persons which don’t exist, not with the best will in the world you can’t,” she had said to Miss Trent. “Mrs Mickleby took care to invite all the genteel families she could lay her hands on, drat her! I daresay, if we only knew it, she thinks I’ll make up my numbers with the Shilbottles, and the Tumbys, and the Wrangles, which is where she’ll find herself mightily mistaken.”

Miss Trent suggested mildly that the Shilbottles were very agreeable people, but was overborne. “Agreeable they may be,” said Mrs Underhill, “but they’re not genteel. Mr Shilbottle goes to Leeds every day to his manufactory, and I hope I know better than to invite him to meet a lord! Why, next you’ll be telling me I ought to send a card to the Badgers! No! His lordship and Sir Waldo had better be bored than disgusted!” She added, on a hopeful note: “One thing you may depend on: they’ll find nothing amiss with their dinner!”

The repast which she set before her guests was certainly enormous, consisting of two courses, with four removes, and a score of side-dishes, ranging from a rump of beef a la Mantua, wax baskets of prawns and crayfish, to orange soufflés and asparagus, and some atlets of palates: a delicacy for which her cook was famous.

Miss Trent was not present at dinner, but she brought Charlotte down to the drawing-room afterwards, and was instantly seen by Sir Waldo, when he came into the room with the rest of the gentlemen. She was wearing a dress of crape with lilac ribbons, with long sleeves, and the bodice cut rather high, as befitted a governess, but he thought she looked the most distinguished lady present, and very soon made his way to her side.

The room had been cleared for dancing, and the musicians from Harrogate were tuning their instruments. Mrs Underhill, explaining that she thought the young people would like to dance, had begged Sir Waldo not to think himself obliged to take part, if he did not care for it, which had made it easy for him to range himself amongst the elders of the party. He might be noted for his courtesy but he had not the remotest intention of standing up with a dozen provincial girls through a succession of country dances. But when the first set was forming he went up to Miss Trent, and solicited the honour of leading her into it. She declined it, but could not help feeling gratified.

“That’s a set-down!” remarked Sir Waldo. “Are you going to tell me that you don’t dance, ma’am?”

She was thrown into a little natural confusion by this unexpected rejoinder, and said with less than her usual calm: “No, thank you. That is, yes, of course I do, but not—I mean—”

“Go on!” he said encouragingly, as she stopped, vexed with herself for being suddenly so gauche.“You do dance, but not with—er—gentlemen who are addicted to sporting pursuits! Have I that correctly?”

She looked quickly at him. “Did I say that?”

“Yes, and in a tone of severe disapprobation. You did not then tell me you preferred not to dance with me, of course: the occasion hadn’t arisen.”

“I haven’t told you so now, sir!” she replied, with spirit. “I said—I hope civilly!—that I don’t dance at all!”

“After which,” he reminded her, “you said that you do dance, but not—! Civility then overcame you, I collect! Quite tied your tongue, in fact! So I came to your rescue. I wish you will tell me what I’ve done to earn your disapproval.”

“You are quite mistaken, sir. You must know that you have done nothing. I assure you I don’t disapprove of you!”

“Just my imagination, Miss Trent? I don’t believe it, but I’m very ready to be convinced. Shall we join this set?”

“Sir Waldo, you are labouring under a misapprehension! It would be most improper in me to stand up with you, or with anyone! I’m not a guest here: I am the governess!”

“Yes, but a most superior female!” he murmured.

She looked at him in some astonishment. “Did you know it, then? And asked me to dance? Well, I’m very much obliged to you, but I think it shows a strange want of conduct in you! To ask the governess rather than Miss Wield—!”

“My cousin was before me. Now, don’t recite me a catalogue of the girls I might have asked to stand up with me! I daresay they are very amiable, I can see that one or two are pretty, and I know that I should find them all dead bores. I’m glad you won’t dance: I had rather by far talk to you!”

“Well, it won’t do!” she said resolutely. “I am quite beneath your touch, sir!”

“No, no, that’s coming it much too strong!” he said. “When I have it on excellent authority that your uncle is a General!”

For a moment she suspected him of mockery; then she met his eyes, and realized that the laughter in them was at a joke he believed she would appreciate. She said, with a quivering lip: “D-did Mrs Underhill say that? Oh, dear! I shouldn’t think you could possibly believe that she didn’t learn about my uncle from me, but I promise you she didn’t!”

“Another of my misapprehensions! I had naturally supposed that you introduced him into every conversation, and had been wondering how it came about that you forgot to mention him when we first met.”

She choked. “I wish you will stop trying to make me laugh! Do, pray, Sir Waldo, go and talk to Mrs Mickleby, or Lady Colebatch, or someone! I might have twenty generals in my family, but I should still be the governess, and you must know that governesses remain discreetly in the background.”

“That sounds like fustian,” he remarked.

“Well, it isn’t! It—it is a matter of social usage. It will be thought most unbecoming in me to put myself forward. I can see that already Mrs Banningham is wondering what can possess you to stand talking to me like this! Just the thing to set people in a bustle! You may stand on too high a form to care for the world’s opinion, but I can assure you I don’t!”

“Oh, I’m not nearly as arrogant as you think!” he assured her. “Setting people in a bustle is the last thing I wish to do! But I find it hard to believe that even the most deplorably top-lofty matron could think it remarkable that I should engage in conversation the niece of one of my acquaintances. I should rather suppose that she would think it abominably uncivil of me not to do so!”

“Are you acquainted with my uncle?” she demanded.

“Of course I am: we are members of the same club! I don’t mean to boast, however! He is an older and by far more distinguished man than I am, and acquaintance is all I claim.”

She smiled, but looked rather searchingly at him. “Are you also acquainted with his son, sir? My cousin, Mr Bernard Trent?”

“Not to my knowledge. Ought I to be?”

“Oh, no! He is very young. But he has a number of friends amongst the Corinthian set. I thought perhaps you might have encountered him.”

He shook his head; and as Sir Ralph Colebatch came up at that moment she excused herself, and moved away to find Charlotte. She soon saw her, going down the dance with Arthur Mickleby; and realized ruefully, but with a little amusement, that while she had been engaged with the Nonesuch her enterprising pupil had contrived to induce Arthur to lead her into the set. Some mothers, she reflected, would have censured her pretty severely for not having kept a stricter chaperonage over a schoolgirl admitted to the drawing-room merely to watch the dancing for an hour, before going demurely upstairs to bed; but she was not surprised to find Mrs Underhill complacently eyeing her daughter’s performance, or to learn that she had given Charlotte leave to dance.